Why Top 45?

These are the things that float to the top of my list of activities that I want to do for the year 2012 when I am 45 years old. The list is comprised of things that I have either never tried or have wanted to try and just didn't have the courage or time to do it. Follow along and watch my progress and feel free to comment or add words of encouragement to help keep me going for the next 365 days!

Monday, September 17, 2012

On the list, I had picked to do the Austin Tri Rocks triathlon and had to make a switch due to lack of training time. Without proper training, I am pretty concerned about injury. I substituted the "World Championship of Texas 3 on 3 Swimming Tournament" that took place this past Sunday. The tournament consists of a series of games where a team of three competes with another team of three in various races and a team is eliminated after two lost games. The pairs of competitors swim along other pairs of competitors in order to add a little bit of excitement and to prevent the tournament from lasting all day and night. The games were in the following order: Free relay, 50 fly, 50 back, 75 IM (no freestyle), 50 free, 50 breaststroke then IM relay (again, no freestyle). I was somewhat concerned the event would be canceled (and half hoping it would be, too) due to rain. For those of you who have been in Austin for longer than a month, you know we definitely welcome the rain. For those of you who know me, I get EXTREMELY anxious before any competitive event and I was semi-hoping it would start thundering...we only got rain, lots of rain, but nothing that would cancel the event. At least it was swimming in the rain and not running or riding a bike in the rain.

Pre-Race (Carolyn MIA because she helped organize the event)

My master's coach from the YMCA, Carolyn, organized two teams. The team I was on included our coach Carolyn, Courtney and myself and was named The Naughty Narwhals (our team at the Y is called the Narwhals) and the second team had Brian, Mitch and Christy called Sparkle Motion. Apparently, Sparkle Motion is from the movie Donnie Darko and when I searched the name on google, it came up in the Urban Dictionary defined as, "Phrase that can be used to describe something awesome," and "Originally from the movie Donnie Darko, where Sparkle Motion was the name of a dance group composed of little girls." I would say the first definition is more appropriate because Sparkle Motion at the tournament kicked some booty!

Courtney, Carolyn & Me

Brian, Christy & Mitch

In our first 'game', Carolyn warned us that we were swimming against some pretty tough competition and we may end up 'bagging' the races to conserve our energy. Sure enough, one of the team members of our first opposing teams was apparently named one of the 10 fittest people in Austin. Yes, you read that correctly. In a city that has Lance Armstrong as one of the other top 10 people on that list, one of our first competitors is in his league. Needless to say, we didn't win any of those games in that heat. I came pretty close to winning the 50 free because I said to my competitor that it wasn't fair that they win all of them, but I still didn't win that race.

***UPDATE: I looked up our competition and sure enough, Kristen Turner was mentioned as half of one of the fittest couples in Austin in the Austin Fit Magazine's February 2011 issue. We didn't have a chance....

Our second 'game' was not until the fourth heat which gave us a little bit of rest time. We swam against a set of tween girls and when I looked at them I decided it was probably a better bet that we could with this game. I swam the same events as the first time and we actually won. About half way through the game, I realized this meant we were going to have to swim again and we had no idea if we would get a break because of the nature of the tournament. I was a little bit worried that I had pushed a little too hard against our opponents AND it had really started to rain pretty hard. I know that we were wet already from the water, but it was pretty chilly and there was a breeze. We found it was better to stay in the water as long as we could before each race to keep our muscles warm.

Pre-Race and no rain.

Rain during tournament.

We won our second match up but then we had to turn around immediately and start our third. We just couldn't pull out another win. The three of us were warn out, tired and cold.

The tournament was a blast and I plan to do it again next year. I am also hoping to recruit Nicole and some of her teammates for a group of younger Narwhals. Other than the sore that I developed on teh bottom of my left big tow from having to start so many times on some rough starting blocks, I did get to bring home a prize from our 'win' set of games.